Unfinished Business
Iowa's Rear View Mirror Yields Reflections on R.F.K., Jr.
Twenty-one years ago, I jumped in my car after work and drove two hours from Des Moines to a Clear Lake meeting in hopes of a one-on-one interview with its keynote speaker. I arrived home at our farm around 11:30 p.m., following another two-hour drive. I was up the next morning, writing an online story, based on this interview.
Yet last week, I couldn't convince myself to drive 1.5 hours on a Saturday morning to the Iowa State Fair to listen to the same speaker.
The individual I sought out over two decades ago has lost whatever credibility he ever had. Yet about 15% of Americans polled indicate an interest in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and his announced presidential run.
I'm publishing this column today on the chance that readers might not recall what brought Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to Iowa in April of 2002, or understand why I interviewed him at length for Successful Farming magazine and Agriculture.com.
First, I need to set the stage for Iowa in 2002. The hog market had been decimated by an epic crash. In 1997, producers could sell a 250-lb. hog for $118. By 1998, they were forced to sell a market hog for $45 – the lowest level since the Depression.
Retail prices remained near record-highs, and consumer demand was strong. But large, corporate producers had flooded the market, producing a record 10% more hogs than in 1997. Bruce Rastetter had launched a company called Heartland Pork Enterprises that had grown to be one of Iowa's largest pork producers. Several packing plants also had closed or reduced capacity.
Pseudorabies had wiped out entire hog herds in 1999-2000, as the state of Iowa forced buyouts of producers to liquidate and repopulate. Producers lost hundreds of thousands of dollars of equity.
Murphy Family Farms, a North Carolina company, had arrived in Iowa in the mid-1980s, and was the first to offer production contracts for feeder pigs. By 1999, Murphy's, the largest pork producer, was purchased by Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork packer. Independent producers scrambled to get contracts with pork packers, for fear that they wouldn't be able to market hogs in any other way.
Such vertical integration violated anti-competition rules under the 1921 Packers & Stockyards Act. In the mid-1990s, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and his staff unsuccessfully defended Iowa's law banning meatpackers from owning livestock. He helped lead 16 state attorney generals to endorse the 2001 Model Producer Protection Act. It was effectively killed by industry lobbying; Iowa producers only gained the right to discuss and share contracts with their attorneys.
But more was at stake than economic damage to farmers. In April of 1997, a coalition of 40 families in northern Missouri filed suit against Premium Standard Farms for alleged ongoing violations of the Federal Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act.
George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 2001, and EPA proposed new regulations in December for large livestock operations, requiring them to obtain permits under the Clean Water Act. The American Farm Bureau accused EPA of exceeding its authority. Environmental groups maintained these new rules weren't strict enough, and would result in more pollution of streams and groundwater.
Outsourcing Costs of Doing Business
A few years earlier, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had founded, and become president of the Water Keepers Alliance.
By March 2001, he was a keynote speaker at the national convention of the National Farmers Union in Rochester, New York. He told the group that corporations like Smithfield Foods were able to compete with family farmers because they imposed their costs of doing business onto the public. "The public is paying the cost in reduced property values, damage to commercial fishing, and water pollution," he said.
He traveled to the meeting in Clear Lake in 2002 to urge family farmers to join the fight to keep large hog confinements from destroying the pork industry, rural communities, and the environment.
"EPA said corporations like Smithfield and Premium Standard clearly were breaking the law, and violating the Clean Water Act," Kennedy told farmers. "But EPA admitted that it doesn't enforce the laws. The failure of government has forced us to find champions outside of the regulatory community."
We've heard a lot recently about RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) because of the Fulton County, Georgia prosecutor's indictment of Trump. But who remembers that Water Keepers Alliance attorneys led by Kennedy used RICO in a March 1, 2001 lawsuit against Smithfield Foods? The suit was joined by the Sierra Club, the National Farmers Union, and animal advocates. It was one of a series of federal and state environmental lawsuits they filed in the early 2000s, but it was thrown out by a North Carolina judge.
Many of these attorneys had successfully sued big tobacco, asbestos and Dalkon shield industries. "We're taking unprecedented action against the factory hog industry," Kennedy told the several hundred farmers gathered in Clear Lake that night. "They're using hefty contributions and political clout to insulate themselves from prosecution for their crimes."
Kennedy said that multi-billion-dollar judgments against large-scale corporate pork producers would drive them out, and open the market to sustainable, organic, free-range, and environmentally-friendly pork products.
But by that time, liquidations of hog farms were underway and by the end of 2002, producers had lost an average of $16.22 per head. An estimated 5,780 U.S. hog farms, including 500 in Iowa, went out of business in 2002, according to the USDA.
Foot in Mouth Disease?
Kennedy didn't gain much support in Iowa in 2002. He was widely quoted as saying that "large-scale hog producers were a greater threat to the United States and democracy than bin Laden's terrorist network."
One Farmers Union leader complained that the National Farmers Union lost members as a result of his visit.
I drove home that night enveloped by miles of darkness blanketing a corridor of rich, north central Iowa farmland passed down by generations of farmers. Could Kennedy's legal remedy stop the hemorrhaging of family hog producers? I mused. Surely it was a novel idea, but so many conventional strategies had failed. Looking back today, it was naive to believe that a champion from the East Coast could swoop into Iowa and solve our complex agricultural economic and environmental issues.
In fact, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. proved to be a weak vessel for resolving water quality issues in Iowa. He retired as president of the Water Keepers Alliance in 2020, and his recent anti-vax and conspiracy theories have brought shame to his family's name.
I haven't spent much time over the past two decades thinking about him. But I sometimes wonder what Iowa would be like today if large livestock operations had been stopped from outsourcing their odors and pollution onto Iowans. How different would Iowa agriculture be if hogs still were known as the "mortgage lifter" for independent, beginning farmers? What if the majority of profits from hog production remained in our local, rural communities instead of being exported to wealthy out-of-state corporations (or to the WH Group, the Chinese owner of Smithfield Foods)?
I do know that the Swine Building at the Iowa State Fair is full of--what else? Goats. (They're great 4-H exhibits!) But from 1978 to 2002, the number of swine youth projects declined by 55%. In 1978 Iowa 4-Hers had 14,663 swine projects. By 2002 it had dropped to 6,549 swine projects. In 2004, the number of swine projects declined to 5,689 – a 61% decline in 27 years. Yet during the same period, the number of Iowa 4-Hers increased. Today some counties have difficulty organizing 4-H or FFA county fair youth swine shows.
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I do know there's a beautiful, air-conditioned building with ample amenities at the Iowa State Fair called The Bruce L. Rastetter 4-H Exhibits Building. If hog production had remained diversified across the state of Iowa, instead of concentrated and vertically integrated, would Iowans today still face the threat of the state allowing a private company to use eminent domain to take their land to build carbon pipelines?
I also know there's no champion in a red cape emerging from the Field of Dreams to save Iowa from continuing down the wrong road. I know there's no turning back the hands of time. But is there a way to take steps forward to force Iowa legislators to fund the Iowa Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust passed 10 years ago by Iowa voters? I'm encouraged to believe that the Iowa Nature Summit on November 15 and 16 at Drake University could be a good gathering to chart a new direction for Iowa's public policies.
It's OK to spend a few minutes now and then looking back through Iowa's rear view mirror to determine how we got where we are today. "The past is like using your rear-view mirror in a car. It's good to glance back and see how far you've come, but if you stare too long you'll miss what's right in front of you." It's up to us as Iowans to navigate the best route forward through an evolving food systems and natural resources landscape.
I’m delighted to be part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.
Iowa Writers’ Collaborative Columnists
Thank you once more for a clear, inciteful, sobering and yet hopeful essay.
Thank you, Cheryl.
Well written.